- Tithonus is one of Tenneson's important works, masterfully expanding on Greek
mythology to explore the inevitability of death.
- The poem centers on the character Tithonus who is cursed with eternal aging.
- This piece serves as a prime example of Tenneson's skills in elaborating on myths
and legends.
- Tithonus is written in the form of a dramatic monologue in which only one speaker
is used to tell an entire story.
{myth} :
- Tithonus here is the son of the king of troy in Greek mythology.
- In the poem Eos/Aurora (The goddess of dawn) fell in love with Tithonus.
- In an effort to stay with her beloved forever, Eos asks god Zeus to grant
Tithonus eternal life.
- Zeus agrees to this proposal, but Tithonus would continue aging.
- Throughout his long life, Tithonus continued to age never reaching death.
- In Tenneson's version of this myth, Eos herself grants immortality.
- In the first stanza, Tithonus moans his immortality as he looks around the
woods.
- He repeats the phase - "woods decay" twice, to emphasise or stress the fact the
moving to death is beyond his understanding.
- He describes himself as a white hair shadow that is travelling the world in a
dream.
- He has seen and done everything; he is at the "limit" of the world, trapped in
the east with Eos.
- Anaphora : reptation of certain word or phrases in a poem commonly utilised for
highlighting the themes of a poem.
- In the 3rd stanza the speaker is watching the sky right before the dawn and the
coming of Eos/Aurora.
- The sky is like the "dark world" that all of human kind came from, before they
were born.
- Tithonus describes what Eos looks like as she rises above the horizon.
- He can see her pure brows and ... shoulders.
- Her team of horses then shaken off the "darkness from their ... mames".
- The horses ploughed forward and hoist Eos into the sky.
- This stanza ends with low....
- In the fourth stanza Tithonus asks Eos if she will ever give him an answer, even
if it is shown in tears.
- He knows if he were to see her crying, he would know that " the gods cannot,
themselves cannot recall their deeds".
- Songs of apollo have been compared here.
- The speaker is reminiscencing the better days of his life.
- Even before he met Eos, he talks about times when he did not knew Eos.
- He is remembering about his previous relationship.
- He remembers the curls of this lover's hair in the light and her outline breast
against the light of the sun.
- In the last stanza of the poem tithonus is asking eos to no longer hold him "in
dying east" where the sun always arises.
- His nature is unable to mix with her nature.
- Even though they may both be immortal, his visage and constitution are no longer
what they were.
- Tithonus does not feel for eos the same way he used to.
- Her light feels to him very cold but "wrinkled" his feet.
- This he experienced every morning when the sun is rising and setting "stream"
floating up of the fields around him.
- He feels that the men who are able to die are lucky and people who are already
dead are luckier.
- **Last 6 lines**
- He pleads with her to release him and let him return to the "ground".
- If she was to release him as he sow deeply desires, she will still be able to
"renew" her beauty every morning and see his grave within the earth.
- He will die earth in earth... forget these empty quotes and forget the empty days
which he has been living
